Startuptravels

Developing a Platform for Traveling Entrepreneurs

I co-founded Startuptravels back in 2012 and was the CEO until we closed down operations in 2016. Solving our own problem our goal was to connect traveling entrepreneurs to the local startup environment around the world.

As the CEO I was wearing many hats including hiring, product design, product management and sales.

Product Management100%

Product Design70%

Web Development0%

Learnings

Build a 10x product
When you are building a product you need to make sure you are solving a problem 10x better. It lowers competition and separates you from others.

Build something that matters
Startuptravels did scratch an itch otherwise we would not have 10.000 users. However, the founding team didn’t feel like we solved a major problem.

You are ON or OFF the bus
We experimented too much with part time employees and interns. Find one full time qualified person instead of finding a handful part time.

Build a business – not a user base
Building a business is better than building a user base. Paying users means happy customers that understands the value you deliver.

Use vesting and stock options
When building a company make sure you have a vesting structure that makes sense. If anybody leaves within 6 or 12 months, no equity.

Achievements

10.000 users in 2 months
We managed to build a referral program machine that gave us 10.000 users from 144 countries before launching the product.

Top 7 Startups in Europe
Nominated as one of the 7 most promising startups in Europe by the EU. Great honor and lovely to be acknowledged for the hard work and dedication.

Featured in Entrepreneur.com
We were featured in Entrepreneur.com, which ended up driving a huge amount of traffic to our site and signed up users from 33 countries.

Finalist in “Guldæg”
We made it to the final pitch in Guldæg, which is a Danish startup competition. Judges included Tommy Ahlers, Lars Seier and Morten Wagner.

60 ambassadors
We managed to find 60 ambassadors from 60 different countries helping promote Startuptravels because they loved the concept.